Camus on Sartre’s ’Freedom’: Another ’Misunderstanding’
2008; Philosophy Education Society Inc.; Volume: 61; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2154-1302
Autores Tópico(s)Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre
ResumoSARTRE'S EARLY, formative view of freedom has bothered both passing readers of Sartre and eminent scholars--among them Gabriel Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, and the brilliant philosophical writer, Albert Camus. Sartre's attribution of absolute, total or complete freedom to the being struck against the grain of dominant thinking the history of philosophy. And, for many 20th century thinkers, it suggested disturbing consequences. But, my judgment, the repeated criticisms and/or dismissals of Sartre's seminal views on freedom are often rooted basic misunderstanding and misinterpretation of his position. Nowhere is this more apparent than Camus's critique, especially his controversial Rebel (l'Homme revolte) and the acrimonious, divisive, 1952 confrontation with Sartre regarding it. (1) Elsewhere, (2) I have offered only preliminary outline of my case against the interpretation presented by Camus and variously made by Marcel, Merleau-Ponty, Frondizi, and others. In the present paper, however, I shall offer detailed examination of this matter. Although my paper will attempt, primarily, to establish Camus's misunderstanding of Sartre's view of freedom, I believe (and intend) that my argument applies similarly to many other of Sartre's critics, including those mentioned above. On behalf of fairness, I shall not conclude without indicating how some of Sartre's own remarks have contributed to the repeated misinterpretation of his original position on freedom. If successful, my paper will have shown Sartre's concept of freedom to be considerably more complex than it is normally treated, and will also alert readers to the importance of distinguishing among dimensions of freedom, as they examine views of freedom the history of philosophy, present as well as past. In order to make my case, I shall begin with resume of the fundamental features of Sartre's original and core ontological analysis of freedom Being and Nothingness. My account will attempt to confine itself to what is essential to my present argument. (3) I Sartre's Original Position. root of Sartre's view of freedom, and equally of his ontology, is expressed early Being and Nothingness: Human freedom precedes essence man and makes it possible; the essence of the being is suspended his freedom. What we call freedom is impossible to distinguish from the being of human reality. Man does not exist first to be free subsequently; there is no difference between the being of man and his being-free. (4) This passage, it must be noted, comes his chapter on The Origin of Negation and after his characterization of reality terms of consciousness (being-for-itself) and nothingness. Given this passage, among others, one might say that part 1 of Being and Nothingness, there is sometimes uneasy, complex, problematic equating of freedom with reality or consciousness--more precisely, self-conscious consciousness--and negation. Free conscious being or conscious free being, though ontologically groundless, arises (the event) negation of Being, or, to put it another way, the negation of itself as Being or as substantial. Free conscious being is not, at birth, ontologically autonomous or independent; to use Sartre's terms, it is born supported by being which is not itself; (5) it is by itself devoid of content; it is its own nothingness (no-thing-ness), always at distance from itself, always in question, always lack, never at one with itself: it is non-substantial absolute that came to be, that posited itself, relation to and spontaneous negation of ontologically prior being--that is, being-in-itself. Thus, for Sartre, reality is a being which is what it is not and which is not what it is. (6) And, it is such because it is free being. It is free of all prior determination and constitutes itself as negation. …
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